


The Trials We Face

by BurrSquee, Tikor



Series: Castebook: Casteless [3]
Category: Exalted
Genre: Gen, Lunars, POV First Person, Roleplaying Character, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-31
Updated: 2018-04-04
Packaged: 2019-04-16 09:25:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 5,183
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14161752
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BurrSquee/pseuds/BurrSquee, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tikor/pseuds/Tikor
Summary: Herein are the trials of four Casteless as they are challenged within and without Creation.





	1. The Trials We Face: Casteless

The Casteless face no trials from mentors determining and fixing their Castes. They either never get the opportunity, or spurn it. But it is like trading the hare today for the buck tomorrow. What little debt, trouble, or embarrassment they are spared at the hand of an elder rarely measures up to ostracisation from the Silver Pact, or the creeping threat of Chimerism. Creation is a trying place for the Casteless. The Wyld, yet more dangerous. Some think they are up to the challenge. Others know they are not.


	2. Faithful Pia

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Faithful Pia, meeting her own kind.

**Kether Rock**  
Adjusting. That’s what father Persimmon says I’m doing. Well, it’s been years, and I feel like I’ve adjusted well enough. But they go _on_ and _on_ about rules I can’t even remember half the time. A hundred practices, a thousand pages, and five promises. Just because they sit inside and read them _over_ and _over_ again _all day_ doesn’t mean the rest of us should have to.

Whenever I can, I sneak out of lessons and wander about the temple. I offer to help the cooks chop vegtables. They always give me the dullest knife, I can tell. I tell jokes to the guardsmen to see if they’ll break stance and laugh. They usually do. I leave notes for the priests with silly directions and catch them _actually_ following them while mumbling about gods. They’re the easiest to fool.

The washerladies tell me stories and let me stay if I rub the clothes along the washerboards with them. The masons let me paint this goop they have along the bricks that will be the new wing of the temple. They even let me do it all messy-like, one of them just follows behind me and spreads it where it needs to be. They laugh a lot, and sometimes I think it’s _at_ me, but it sure beats lessons. 

One time, father Persimmon took me to see the lady who runs everything, Maduka Shin. He told me to call her ‘master’ and I made sure to do that. She was _scary_! She didn’t smile even _once_ the whole time I was there! She asked me what I thought of the Illuminated Ones, the priests, and about Jak. I told her the truth, that I thought the Illuminated Ones were the children of the gods come down to Creation to save everyone. That the priests were their mouthpieces and deserve our respect, and that Jak was an Illuminated One who already proved himself a savior when he saved me. She nodded, just a little bit. That seemed to be the end of it, and father Persimmon lead me out of the room.

 **My Latest Scouting Trip with Jak**  
I used to follow Jak everywhere. Once I healed up from how he found me, anyway. No, not to _bed_ , silly. I _wish_.

Just, around Kether Rock, and whenever he went out I made sure to get ready to go, too. People don’t watch me like they watch the Illuminated Ones, certainly not when they’re around. Jak’s the least attention-grabbing of them all, and when he’s around I can slip by while they all look at him. 

Anyway, the last time we went out was a scouting mission. Sure beats logistics missions. We get to travel light, without those smelly camels. Just two horses. We get to go over the hills off the roads, down in the valleys, to see what creeks are running and who’s watering at them. We’d been doing that for days, me and Jak, when I had this _horrible_ nightmare. I was so hungry, and angry, and there was _all_ this _blood_. Eesh, even remembering it is chilling. 

I woke up sore, like I’d run a bunch the previous day, but way more than I should have for the easy travelling we were doing. Jak looked at me funny, and when I bounded over to him, he backed up just as far. He’d _never_ done that before! I immediately got sad, which made him get flustered, and he said, all gruff-like, “Pack your things, we’re moving.”

So I did, and we hit the road again. Around mid day we found a caravan waiting out the heat, so we stopped for lunch with them. I was glad to stop. It was hot and Jak had been looking at me funny when he thought I wasn’t paying attention. The caravan was wonderful. It felt like going home, though I didn’t know anybody there. I walked around to talk to people to get to know them. There was the guildsman, she was shouting at somebody about something, and the handlers watering their yeddim, moving some packs. Then there were the guards, looking out to the desert, rolling dice, adjusting their swordbelts. And the hanger-ons. A simple pack-merchant, some fellow with a stringed instrument who played me a song (I gave him a coin, but just one), and this really, _really_ muscle-y guy who was asking people about their trades, and who else they’d traded with recently, and if they had any slaves for sale.

Since they didn’t look like they were getting moving anytime soon, Jak left to do some hunting. A bite of desert rabbit would spice up our dry field rations. That’s when that big guy came over and started asking me questions. And then he started glowing! Like, in stripes along his skin and a circle on his forehead. He was making me uncomfortable saying I should come with him back to the city to meet some friends of his. But… but he _knew_!

He said that I had a beast inside me just like the one I dreamed about, and that without some shiny stripes just like his that bad things would eventually happen. He _knew_ I could change shape, and he seemed to know about Jak when I told him he was an Illuminated One. Then things started to look bad, like he was just going to lift me up and walk off with me! 

About that time Jak came back and scared him off. I don’t know how, Jak is about half the size this guy was, but they just looked at each other and the big guy snorted, then repeated that stuff about seeing his friends and getting those stripes. 

Jak decided that was enough scouting. He and I turned around and rode back to Kether Rock to report.

 **Being Cooped Up**  
Ever since I’ve been back from my trip with Jak, I haven’t been allowed to leave again with _anyone_ for _anything_! I’m going _nuts_. Jak’s been gone, and I’ve had to do _extra_ lessons. 

But I’ve heard around the keep that Jak’s on his way back. I’m going to track him down when he does and make him tell whoever made him sneak out without me to _not_ make him do that _again_! Because I know my sweet Jak wouldn’t do that on his own. 

...Would he?


	3. Madame Vert

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Madame Vert, making sense of a tangled world.

**Widow and Sorcerer**  
I did what I knew how to do afterwards. I called to the Salinan Society, and they helped me get plans in motion. This had not been the first time that a member of their own had died in the pursuits of their work. They complimented me on my quick thinking, having thought that my husband had kept the spear closeby for the worst case scenario; a shame he wasn’t quick enough himself. They helped me set up funeral rites for my late husband, as I was seen to not be in the right mind to do it. Honestly, I can’t say I was. There were so many things racing through my mind, including what I had become. But I played my part well, as I have always done, and I was the grieving widow at the services. It was an easy skin to wear, though I did not feel it in my heart. The services were quite lovely and well attended, I must say.

I needed a job again, as I couldn’t continue doing the work of my husband. I wasn’t a member of the Salinan Society, and the group had no idea that it was I who was key to my husbands improvement over the years. I wasn’t going to tell them any of that, for it would raise too many questions. I found work with Lanticul, a thaumaturge and peer of my husband’s, who I had worked for at the library in what felt like another life. He had started his own business and needed scribes and calligraphers. Medical texts were always in need of being updated and duplicated, and that was the task I set to in Lanticul’s shop. Even though the job is a cover, I’ve now read enough of them to perform some wise woman’s medicine on the side.

I kept my husband’s lab and library open to the Salinan Society. It helped to keep off questions of why I didn’t pass on the belongings to any one individual in particular. I cited the spread of knowledge that was crucial to being a part of the society, indicated that it had been my husband's greatest wish that anyone who wanted to learn could study and practice there, as he had. It helped to keep me in touch with the other members of society, and see how their research was moving forwards. I was even asked questions, as many of the notes my husband had in his workshop were in my hand. Everyone assumed it was just that my penmanship was better than my husbands, and I therefore helped him in writing down his dictations.

Unlike my husband, the members of the Salinan Society did not stay up all hours of the night working and reading. They respected my continued ownership of the lab, even if I offered it up to them. I was pleased to observe their habits. This left crucial time for me to do my own studying and learning, when the sun was down. 

**The Curious Teachings of Gods and Dragons**  
I had been spending time with some of the small gods local to the surrounding forests. They told me what they knew of the “Moonchildren” as they called them. My scouring of Tarn’s library told me that these were some sort the Anathama, but the Dragon-sotted fools never got specific enough for me to understand what had happened to me, content to repeat the vague stories of the shikari of the Wyld Hunt or repeat the Immaculate dogma of demons taking over mortal’s bodies with the stolen power of the moon. I felt that it couldn’t be as bad as it seemed, for many of the old Salinanian texts told of the founder Salina, who was also considered an Anathama. I certainly didn’t _feel_ possessed, and any power of the moon I might have I didn’t mean to steal. With this in mind, I resolved to learn more, and eventually became a sorcerer, though not through the dusty tomes ‘wise’ men pour over. I resolved not to make the same mistakes as my husband, those of ignorance and confidence. These wishes led me down a road I’m not proud to have walked.

 **The Blasphemous Lessons of Demons**  
On a temperate summer day on which I expected to have no more challenge than cramped hands from copying some dead man’s drivel, I awoke to a deeply resonant and pleasing voice. Slow to wake, I listened to its words in the nonjudgmental way of the half-conscious. 

“I have lived a thousand lives, seen through two thousand eyes, and walked on four thousand paws but never once have I walked alongside the just rule of gods.”

I became fully awake once its meaning became clear. A teodozjia had entered my bedchamber, and luckily for me, it decided spreading its blasphemy was more important than taking revenge on its brother whom I killed. I vaulted from my bed, tossing the light cover between me and the massive lion’s heavy Jade claws, retrieving my demon-scorching spear from its corner and driving it into the heart of the beast, careful to avoid the death-swipes of its claws before they turned to ash. 

The rest of the day at the my scribe’s work I jumped at shadows and started when anyone addressed me. I felt haunted, though I knew I had laid that demon to rest. That night I ensured all my doors and windows were locked tight before resting.

The next morning brought the next verse alongside the sunrise.

“I have been to every pole of Creation, to the four corners of the heavenly city, and to the depths of the prison Malfeas. Not once have I witnesses the god’s justice, only their cruelty. They oversee sickness, and death, and infirmary, keeping eternal life and health for themselves, laughing at their lessers’ misery. They lock their mothers and fathers away to rot. And worst of all they squander their potential at games meant merely for amusement.”

I slew this one as well. I paid a small boy to run across town to tell Lancitul I would not be scribing today. Instead, I consulted my library for demonic wards. I completed my first attempt at one by noon. By sundown, a dozen were layered about my home.

The same voice woke me again the next day. 

“I have read the laws of gods and men, large tomes that constantly change based on the petty power games of the Exalted and the Incarna. None compare to the unchanging perfection of hierarchy in whose name She lives. None have the elegance of Cecelyne’s edicts. None sing so sweetly of peace as the River of All Torments that once kept evil hands idle. The tragedy of their loss in Creation is greater than all that was lost in the fires of the Three Spheres Cataclysm. ” 

Resigned, I did not reach for my spear this time. I spoke to the demon. “I do not know how you break free of your cage, how you break into my home, or step through my wards. But I want it to stop.”

“Such ignorance is expected of the Exalted. And you who have not mastered sorcery cannot compel me to respect your desires.”

I knew I was no Dragon-Blooded. Yet, I also suspected that the demon would not use one ounce more deference in naming me than it was forced to. Was I, were all ‘Moonchildren’, Exalted? Were the rest of the Anathema also Exalted? That didn’t make sense, not with what I’d read in the Immaculate Texts. Clearly something was amiss. Further, I caught the implication that were I to master sorcery I could sleep as long into the day as I wished. I was tempted. To the demon, I spoke again.

“Tell me more.”

Afterwards, for many days, I heard the recitation of the teodozjian scripture. With it, came my mastery of Essence, my power of sorcery, and the authority to bind the very demon that taught me. No teodozjia has interrupted my sleep since. 

And I burned my copies of the Immaculate Texts.

Mastering My True Flesh  
In my hybrid form, I don’t find myself to be the meek creature I was when I played the widow. Adventurous and daring, discovering the city of Azure as I never would have done before in my old skin. This form of mine, half tree strider, half human, is more than capable of moving about unseen, even for it’s large height. But every few months, I find myself doing things I wouldn’t normally do, even in this new form of mine. Testing boundaries, flirting with a youthful rebellion I never had in my mortal life.

Once, after months of exploring the city at night, I was overcome with an insatiable lusty desire. There was nothing I could do to fight this, even if I had the ability. My brain fixated on the man I had seen earlier that day. The son of Azure’s mayor had come into the shop. I had to admit that he was handsome and I knew he was unmarried, but I also knew that I wasn’t someone he would look at twice. Our status was just too far apart - him of royalty and myself not even an aristocrat, merely in the professional class. But when I next changed my shape to mix my humanity with my animal spirit, I couldn’t help myself - I sought him out. I jumped onto the balcony of his room, and walked inside. He was awake and staring, as though I was both a monster and a dream. I spent the night having my way with him, eeking out every pleasure I sought. Afterwards, when my mind had come back to itself, I left the same way I came. It was not my proudest moment, and I hope to avoid him in the future, even if he has never seen my human face.

 **The Wyld Hunt**  
Things didn’t always run so smoothly. I made the mistake of going out while a garrison of Realm soldiers were inside the city limits. Before I knew it, a Wyld hunt had ensued. I remember thinking of how stupid I was, while I jumped from rooftop to rooftop, attempting to escape the Dragon-Blooded warrior that followed me, buoyed by the winds of his Anima. I had spent enough time working in elemental summoning to call upon aid, but they were simply too close to spare the time. Instead, I called upon my sorcery, twisting Essence into the disorienting flash of the Burning Eyes of the Offender.

Suddenly there was a man beside me, running with me, sending his own magic back at the solder, silver knives solidified of his own will. Where he moved, I followed, for I trusted this man much more than I trusted the tempest-fed Dragon-Blooded behind me. He, it seemed, didn’t want to harm me as of yet. The now was important, and later would come at her own time. I followed him outside the city, and into the safety of the wooded riverbanks.

He introduced himself as Light Sinks Deep. He was a tall, pale man traveling from the West in search of another of his kind called The Marked Wolf. All of which he went into great detail about. Everything he was saying went over my head and jumbled my thoughts, and it took me longer than I would have liked to interrupt and ask him what he meant by all of this. The man liked to talk incessantly. He explained to me that he, and I as well, were Lunars, chosen of the Moon Goddess Luna. Didn’t I know this already? Apparently not. This is what the spirits had meant when they called me a “Moonchild”. He had seen my spell blind the “that Air-aspect back there” and said that I was clearly meant for the No Moon caste, like he was himself. He went into saying that obviously I needed to join the Crossroads Society after being tattooed, as there was no other option for a sorcerer such as myself.

All of this brought back more than unpleasant memories of life under my late husband; about a life outside my own control. I had only just begun to make my own decisions in life and to make my own path in it. I couldn’t give up this freedom that I had so recently won. I didn’t know anything about these factions and Castes he was going on and on about. How could he know what I needed, having just met me?

I tried to be diplomatic. I tried to be kind. But he wouldn’t shut up. And when I could get a word in edgewise, he simply scoffed as though he knew better than I did. Eventually I just snapped. I told him exactly what he could do with his ‘Silver Pact’ in the coarsest of terms. He was stunned, but I didn’t care. I turned around and left.

I weave my own connections out of Creation's Essence now. No one binds me any longer.


	4. Echinna

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Echinna, steeped in confinement and Wyld energy, finds a way out.

**Confinement**   
_The 28th of Ascending Wood, Realm Year 716_

Oh, when I was a city creature I worried about money and mates and all the things that seem like wonderful burdens now. I would selfishly trade my best days in here for the worst ones as a free woman. Yet, I’m glad I’m apart from the folk of the city. 

The Beast would get them all if I were free.

The greatest trial of my second life has been to escape. At the start, I spent every waking hour thinking of plans or attempting them. I dug till my claws bled, and dug yet further, only to find the fog beneath the ground. I built a mound of earth to see the top of the fog, to try and hop over it, only to find it curved and domed above. I smashed myself in frustration full speed at the walls, only to bounce back bloodied and battered. But that was just the beginning.

Other creatures, birds, beasts, and even men were able to cross the fog like any other. It was not solid to them. I performed the sacred hunt on what birds entered my small domain, to see if their wings could break the dome above. None did. I hunted the burrowing creatures to see if their claws could dig beyond it. None did. The strongest shape of man I could snare wielding the heaviest hammer only shattered the tool on the hardened air when in my hand.

Through all my failure, the Wyld was and is my constant companion. Despondent, I began to listen. Stories are the stuff of the Wyld, eagerly it spoke to me. After I spent my days railing against my cage, at night I sat as a child before the storyteller. Songs of the Shinma, feats of the Raksha, incomprehensible Unshaped, and the changes Creation-born undergo when they embrace the Wyld were my after-supper entertainments. It told me that even separated as it was in space from the greater Wyld, all Wylds were connected. Stories of the Balorian Crusade, great breakthroughs, played out before me when I quested for a way out. I tried to emulate them, to bring so much Wyld into my cage that it burst, but did not have the grace of those beautiful Raksha who commanded the clouds of Wyld like storm gods rule the sky. 

The Wyld tempts me. With songs I can feel and visions that cloud my waking and dreaming mind. Desperate, I let them all in to find the inspiration to unlock these bars from within. I heard a story of the uncageable Beast, so mighty, so willful, that it could not be restrained. That’s when The Beast first came over me.

It is rage and hunger and thirst and lust for life by any means, no matter how degrading. It is the animal fire in us all let loose, made flesh. When I first found it, I let it out again and again as it battered the walls. I believed I was making progress, wearing them down. That year, five times as many Dragon-Blooded came to chant at the walls and the hooded figure, too. The whole time I slavered and beat at them, every inch the monster they believed me to be. It was no use. Some fell back in fear, but enough stayed to renew and harden the walls against my new power.

 

**Acceptance**   
_The 19th of Resplendent Wood, Realm Year 744_

I have come to fear The Beast. It may have been the answer once, but the Dragon-Blooded have closed off that path. I take pleasure in the little things. Of the meat I hunt. Of remembering the year, the month. Of listening to the moon to know the day. Counting the time that The Beast does not have control over me. The habit of counting is how I know it comes closer now, and for longer. There is only one way this ends. 

Why did I have to be Chosen?! What did I do to earn your curse, Luna?! Is this the life you wanted for me? Do you take some sick pleasure in seeing me devolve, to lose my mind, to watch myself waste here? 

My every prayer goes unanswered.

**Release**   
_The 2nd of Resplendent Air, Realm Year 766_

The Dragon-Blooded of Thorns did not come to tend my cage this year, or the year before. I can see cracks in it now. There was a time I would have rejoiced. 

When The Beast takes me, it places its claws and appendages and tongues in these cracks, straining against them. Each time they get a little wider. When I regain myself, I worry at them. I’m more The Beast than Echinna. I can count the days yet, and they tell me how little time I spend as myself. I deserve to be caged. I am a terror. All the people I remember, the faint memories, are owed a better death than meeting The Beast. Even my enemies. Even the Dragon-Blooded.

But it is not about what I want or deserve, what they have earned of justice or the lack of it. There is only what has been done, and what will be done. I have created The Beast. I made it to break this cage, and it will do so. Someday soon.


	5. The Chimera

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Chimera and the stories of the beast.

**The Trial of Hunger, the Consequence of Shape**  
The trial, the challenge, the reason to exist for the Chimera is to eat so that it may change. All meals are sacred to the Chimera, all blood flows from the heart, all the dreams thereafter are reflected in the Chimera’s flowing, fluid body. So many meals, the Chimera has had, that the shapes bubble to the surface even when it sleeps and dreams. If one were to see the Chimera, then turn their head, and then look back, it would not look the same. But the wild combination of madly jumbled parts could be mistaken for none other than the Chimera.

The Chimera hunts the edge of the world, not its center, not the total chaos beyond the Deep Wyld. In Creation it does not find enough easy meals of Essence, so it shuns those hunting grounds. But some distant dream, some half remembered oath, some love of a woman in a green dress and dusty feet, keeps the Chimera from straying too far from Creation’s shores. The Wyld places it does hunt are full of stories made flesh, and they have very strong dreams within them. Its hunger stays quiet through these beautiful, terrible, whimsical dreams. The Chimera enjoys being lost there, in those dreams, away from the hunger, with a concept of self. Even if that self is a lie, a story, real only while asleep.

 **Lone Wolf Against the Pack**  
Once, when the Chimera was still young, three Lunars came for the Chimera. Above the scent of snow it could smell their kinship, their souls similar to its own. It thought it would have a great feast of them. She bared her fangs and they drew their claws, doing battle in the way of beasts. But everywhere the Chimera snapped with her jaws, they were not. While its neck was out their slicing claws would bite her. Missed bite, slashed neck, missed tackle, sliced body. Each time the Chimera would shift its shape to heal the wound. Finally, the Lunars cut the Chimera’s head clean off in one blow. They picked it up and took it away.

Over the next few months another one grew from the Chimera’s body. Ravenous, it ate whatever plant or beast was around it. Much later, it ate a man and came to reflect at its reflection. It decided that the new head was not as good as the old head. And that it would hunt the Lunars who had hunted it, to see if she could find the old one. Or maybe take theirs after tasting their hearts’ blood. They might sit its shoulders even better.

But then the hunger returned, and the Chimera forgot the sensations and concepts of comparison, or vengeance, of consistent shape at all. And it ate what crossed its path, then dreamed the simple dreams of animals.

 **The Place That Was Also a Meal**  
While travelling the journeys along the edge of the world, the Chimera landed in a place that had thoughts like meals did. It could smell the dreams in the earth, though when it ate the ground beneath its feet, with the mouths that grew there on her soles, the dirt passed without sating its hunger. 

As it walked on its foot-mouths, which did not listen to its thoughts that the ground was no meal and continued to eat and pass the dirt if it did not keep moving, it met forms that spoke to it. The Chimera did not listen, and tried to eat each one. Yet they would fade into the air when her claws pincered them, and seep out of her teeth where she bit them. The hunger did not like being taunted so, and threw the Chimera into a rage. That rage carried it to the center of that place.

Throbbing at the Arcane Redoubt were the dreams of the ground and the forms and the place, all connected. The Chimera could see the sweet Essene flowing in and out of this heart that beat in time with all around it. A dozen forms solidified before this heart, this Wyld font, this animating intelligent dream, to protect it. But the Chimera remembered the forms that vanished when it bit them, for the rage had woken both halves of its mind for the hunt. It ignored their tales, it clawed and bit their forms, and none of them stopped the Chimera from sinking its teeth into the place’s heart.

The Chimera ate, gorged, and yet the heart as not fully eaten. The hunger banished, and the Chimera lay down to dream. It dreamt of being the moon, of loving the earth, of challenging the sun, of taunting the stars. It dreamt of a mountain so tall the top could not be seen, a forest so thick all the trees’ trunks merged into one, a chasm so wide that it had no other side and no bottom, an ocean so deep no light filtered into its depths, a fire so bright that even with eyes open nothing could be seen. It knew these things were connected, and revered, and important, and that it should somehow remember this moment, that it must not lose this feeling, this revelation, to the hunger that would soon come to wake it. It slept for as long as it could.

When the Chimera woke, the half-eaten, bleeding heart was still there, seeping its Essence out into the ground. The Chimera forgot the moon and the sun and the stars and the elements. It was controlled once again by the hunger, that bade it to hunt and to eat. So, the Chimera gorged itself again, and dreamed a different dream.


End file.
